Articles by DN

Iconoclasm Is Necessary DN ICONOCLASM is a necessary endeavour, intellectual and practical, in every age. There are those whose basic outlooks have to be rejected and there are others whose limitations have to be understood. Call it what you will, developing a critique or iconoclasm, such a settling of accounts is essential in each age for the oppressed to be able to carry forward their struggle for emancipation. If the sham of the tBengal Renaissance' had to be exposed some twenty years ago, the limitations of past class struggles as, for instance, that conducted by Swami Sahjanand's Kisan Sabha, have to be brought to light today. This is not just an idle endeavour, but one critically related to the task of working out a direction for the continuing agrarian struggle in Bihar.

Panchayats DN IN the run-up to the elections Rajiv Gandhi has taken a number of steps to build a constituency among sections of the rural electorate. The 'Jawahar Rojgar Yojna', which takes schemes of rural employment out of the purview of the state governments and centralises them, and the Panchayat Bill, which supposedly gives more power to the village-level ('grassroots') organisations

Kisan Sabha AMONG various birth centenaries, this is also the birth centenary of Swami Sahjanand, the legendary leader of the Bihar Pradesh Kisan Sabha, which was by far the largest and most vigorous kisan organisation in India in the colonial period.

DN The Madhya Pradesh government's tendu leaf collection policy which does away with contractors and supposedly restores the rights of the tribals over the forests is a clever ploy to weaken the BJP support base among forest contractors as also to forestall the growing left movement in the region.

DN An important factor determining the nature of the class struggle in Bihar is that the state alone does not confront the peasants as an armed force; the landlords and their gangs immediately and continuously do the same. The landlords continue to be not only 'malik' but also, partly, 'sarkar'.